A friend and I are seeking to compile a comprehensive list of Buddhist meditation styles across traditions. Consulting books, online resources, teachers, and personal practice, we have already encountered quite a few different techniques and approaches. Although we've created partial lists from our background research and our own meditation experience, we would like to hear what fellow practitioners can contribute. In addition to meditation styles, we're interested in other activities people consider part of their formal practice, including but not limited to activities practiced on retreat. We also intend to run a survey/poll about the most widely used forms of meditation in the near future.

So this inquiry consists of two main questions:

1. What are the various forms of meditation that are practiced in Buddhism - whether specific to a certain school or universal to all schools?

2. What other activities (apart from meditation) are typical of your practice and/or retreat settings?

Meditation for the purpose of this list refers to formal practice, particularly within the categories of shamatha and vipashyanā. A few examples from the present Mahayana list of meditation styles are included below:

If appropriate, these practices can be further elaborated upon (i.e., various meditation practices that fit under the broader category of Ngöndro) or even classified as sub-styles of either (or both) shamatha and vipashyanā. Any and all feedback is much appreciated.

Astus wrote:Do you have a working definition of "meditation"? So that it becomes possible to consider styles.

Although the categories shamatha and vipashyanā are helpful for defining meditation, Buddhist practices in general are also of interest here. These can include anything from Zazen to Nembutsu to recitation of the Bodhisattva Vows. In addition to the brief list of meditation styles outlined in the post above, a few examples from our list of "other activities" related to practice are as follows:

For example: you have puja recitation, prostrations and dharani/mantra (which are two different things, by the way) under "other" whereas they would fit quite neatly into the "meditation style" of tantra (and not only).

From my own experience, I think it's safe to say that Visualization isn't practiced exclusively within the context of Tantra. For instance, I've practiced Visualization (in the context of Vipassana with a Theravada sangha and Zazen with a Soto Zen sangha) but I've never practiced Tantra.

The following amendments (or clarifications) can be made based on feedback so far:

Zazen

Shikantaza Kōan Huatou

Kinhin Sādhanā Visualization

Tantra

Ngöndro VisualizationPūjā recitation Prostrations DhāraṇīMantra

Tonglen Dzogchen Mahāmudrā

Yes, there will inevitably be plenty of overlap, and in the activities list, some categories were blended due to superficial similarities. The point is not necessarily to separate styles but to compile a list that can be conceptualized as a tree, with various branches and leaves. Some branches are bound to intertwine.

Thank you, Greg, for the feedback. Additional feedback from other practitioners (from all traditions) would be very helpful.

Perhaps it would be more helpful to list practices/emphases under schools/traditions instead. Here's a rough outline (again, this is completely open to revision). Forgive me for enjoying list-making so much.

I can't speak entirely for Madhy, but she and I have been working on compiling a complete list of Buddhist practices these past few weeks, primarily as an interesting exercise in its own right, but ultimately as resource to be incorporated into a new feature for our HamsterWheel Buddhist meditation support site.

A westerner teacher/translator that did two traditional 3 year retreats some decades ago said that he learned somewhere between 150-200 meditation techniques in one retreat (I assume that was in one tradition). A different teacher I have personally met, in the context of shamatha practice, said he knows somewhere between 30-40 variations of shamatha.

I'm interested to see a list. It seems to be quite a task.

Last edited by Roland on Fri Aug 02, 2013 3:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

"Seek truth in meditation, not moldy books. Look in the sky to find the moon, not in the pond." - Persian proverb

The Amitayurdhyana Sutra (aka Visualisation Sutra) describes 13 methods. They are visualisations of various objects. But the tradition knows several other objects one could visualise, and the visualisation can be combined with different postures and movements. These are practices related to the Amitabha. Also, in the Pure Land tradition of East Asia the most common understanding of buddha-remembrance is not a visualisation practice but the recitation of the name. Reciting the name also has many forms and styles. Another factor is that not only those who consider themselves Pure Land practitioners use these practices but almost everyone. Also, Mahayana has several other buddhas, and they all have their own visualisations and recitations. That is, in the single category of buddha-remembrance there are numerous practices and interpretations of the practices. The single common feature is that they are all related to a specific buddha or bodhisattva. Just to complicate things, buddha-remembrance also means recalling the virtues of the Buddha (Shakyamuni), as it is used in Theravada, and it is more like an inspirational contemplation rather than a focused repetition or visualisation. Adding another factor, buddha-remembrance can also mean abiding in the buddha-mind, that is again not a typical meditation technique.

Thus, in this single term one can encompass so many things that talking about it as if it were a single method is being blind to the complexities that are actually there. That's why I asked if there is any definition of "meditation", because you can't really put all those methods into the categories of shamatha and vipashyana, and even specific traditions don't view all forms of buddha-remembrance as meditative practices.

If you want to follow traditional categories, you should look at the major meditation handbooks, like the Visuddhimagga, the Mohezhiguan and the Bhavanakrama. Theravada distinguishes samatha and vipassana, while Mahayana adds to this their combined practice (which doesn't mean that in actual practice it is not known in Theravada). If you want to encompass other meditation related practices, you can add to those three a fourth as preliminary practices conducive to meditation. Otherwise, as it shows in the current list posted previously, it won't be a list of meditation techniques but rather of various schools.

"There is no such thing as the real mind. Ridding yourself of delusion: that's the real mind."(Sheng-yen: Getting the Buddha Mind, p 73)

Clearly we need to give up on trying to provide any kind of structure to the list, and also acknowledge that the various forms of Buddhist practice cannot be described by their names alone.

Instead we can focus on compiling (as best we can) an unstructured list of the names of all the practices that posters here are familiar with. I believe it will still be an interesting exercise, and at the end we will have a list that will be useful for indicating the various practices we are collectively engaging in.

This is especially relevant because the upcoming feature for the HamsterWheel website (mentioned earlier) requires a list of practices that the user can select from when recording their activity on the communal practice log, presented as a chart.

dharmagoat wrote:I no longer think that trying to force practices into categories will be productive.

Or you should use proper analysis. If a term like "phowa" includes various practices, it means it is not a single meditation method but rather a package of methods. It's like a Happy Meal. You have to dissect them, otherwise the toy will be confused with the hamburger.

"There is no such thing as the real mind. Ridding yourself of delusion: that's the real mind."(Sheng-yen: Getting the Buddha Mind, p 73)